Herbert J. Schlesinger’s research while affiliated with Columbia University and other places

In this second edition of Endings & Beginnings (Routledge, 2006), Herbert J. Schlesinger explores endings and beginnings within psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy; both the obvious main endings and beginnings of any course in treatment, and the many little endings and beginnings that permeate analysis. The second edition contains new chapters including one on transference and counter-transference as sources of information about the process of therapy and as sources of difficulty in ending. it deals especially with the impact of prospective ending on the therapist, which if not understood and well handled, might interfere with working through and impede termination, if not ending itself. Another new chapter deals with the difficulties in terminating with especially narcissistic patients.

What sets off the termination of analysis and psychodynamic therapy from the variety of endings that enter into all human relationships? So asks Herbert J. Schlesinger in Endings and Beginnings: On Terminating Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, a work of remarkable clarity, conceptual rigor, and ingratiating readability. Schlesinger situates termination – which he understands, variously, as a phase of treatment, a treatment process, and a state of mind – within the family of “beginnings and endings” that permeate one another throughout the course of therapy.

In simple, jargon-free language, Herbert Schlesinger sets out to demystify technique, to show how it is based on basic principles that are applicable both to psychoanalysis and to the psychotherapies that derive from it. He has little need for conventional theory; rather, he reframes essential analytic notions - transference, resistance, interpretation, regression, empathy - as processes and assigns technique the goal of promoting the patient’s activity within the treatment situation. The aim of the analytic therapist is to restore to the patient active control of his own life.

Over the years, David Shapiro's career and mine have intersected productively several times. I think we have a talent for bouncing ideas off one another. This piece is about one such encounter, or perhaps it was a mythical encounter for my recollection of it lacks detail. In any case, I prefer not to check on the veridicality of my memory; it serves me well enough, whether or not it tells me the truth in any absolute sense about this occasion of enlightenment. As you will see, I take a narrative view toward truth-telling, and I will leave it to Dr. Shapiro to vet my recollection of the founding incident. In his modest way, he may disown having been the source of my inspiration. I accept that risk. It will make no essential difference to my conclusions, and in view of our long acquaintance, I prefer to be grateful to him rather than to one of his antecedents; if he feels he has not met all of his obligations to his intellectual forbearers, they are for him to acquit. Anyway, enough throat clearing, or to unmix the metaphor, enough pen wiping or pencil sharpening; let me get on with it already.